That Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, would prove a challenge to get published had always been known. Potential traditional publishers had no problems admiring its bold creativity and uninhibited spiritual intensity. What most could not accept was something traditionally troublesome when it comes to artists and the marketplace: the financial risks involved.​With all respect to healthy doubts and sensible reservations, so far as Luther and I were concerned the years of energy, labor, and determination already invested in Elemental by the time 2006 rolled around equated to something more than a calculated transactional value. From the perspectives of our deepest meditations and intentions, the completion of Elemental meant contributing to the cultural legacies established by creative artists like those who made possible such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and the Harlem Renaissance. This last, especially, was one which had already stamped our destinies as Luther had studied with artists of the Harlem Renaissance and I had already co-authored Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

The center image for this art graphic features the first two stanzas of a poem by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL (p. 22) titled "Past, Present & Future Are One" based on a Luther E. Vann painting of the same title. The third-eye illustration seen above was drawn by Jason Maurer when the poem was published in the former SCAD newspaper The Georgia Guardian in 1993, 15 years prior to the publication of ELEMENTAL. The combined creative synergy demonstrates how ELEMENTAL has helped to inspire and empower others from the beginning.

But once creative passion and committed partners empowered us to finally produce a physical book, we reached two important conclusions. First: we recognized the need to articulate, both for potential buyers and booksellers, as definitively as we could, the goals and values inherent in Elemental. Secondly: it seemed obvious the work could be adapted for different mediums. These considerations resulted in the following statements:

ILLUMINATED LOVE

1) The vision behind ILLUMINATED LOVE is that human beings and the environments we inhabit are inherently multidimensional in ways that are typically ignored but which can make our lives richer and more fulfilling than generally recognized or consciously experienced.

2) The mission of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to express through visual art, poetry, and music the creative and spiritual harmony that connects shared public spaces with individual need and existence; and, to demonstrate the multidimensional nature of the same.

3) The objective and/or goal of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to provide a product that functions as a source of entertainment, as inspiration, and as an enhanced tool for the study of employing complementary creative genres within an appealing multi-media format.

When envisioning Elemental as a staged musical or as a video production, I described it thus:

...An exploration and documentation of the way human beings occupy public spaces in interpretative contrast to how they experience inner spaces... It illustrates the way collective intention makes communal interaction possible while individual need and impulse maintain the integrity of a person's separate being.

For example, the Luther E. Vann painting "Christ Listening to Stereo" (p. 27) is of a youth on a bus in New York City (please see image below). The image reveals how the youth is at once physically part of a larger setting while remaining, via his personal stereo, completely apart from it. Immersed in his music, he claims a connection to the artist who made the music and who allows him to not only share in the expressed creative passion, but to utilize the same as a kind of soundtrack for his own anticipations, memories, desires, needs, or fears of the moment. Very similar and yet very different scenes are enacted in such public spaces as parks, malls, back yards, office buildings, clubs, and street corners. They all make the individual part of a larger whole even while many individuals continue to exist primarily as isolated fragments of that whole.

The image used for the cover of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is from a section of Vann's painting "Christ Listening to Stereo."

​From One President and Generation to the Next

​Some might consider the timelessness of the project a good thing in regard to aesthetics but then questionable for the way Elemental's implied commentaries on social and political conditions of a decade ago remain relevant today. In this sense, it continues to illuminate how our least and most desirable practices impact humanity's quest for mutually-advantageous coexistence.

Another example: the ebb and flow of dismay and inspiration from the time of publication until now might be seen in criticisms of former President George Bush's administration as the book was heading to the printer in early 2008. Likewise: less that a year later, after its publication, came Barack H. Obama's unprecedented election to the White House followed by eight years of spectacular innovations and shifts in public consensus regarding everything from race relations and gender equality to environmentalism and economic reforms. And now: current POTUS Donald Trump continues to implement policies resulting in a tug of war between the Oval Office and American citizens committed to resistance.

From one president to the next and one generation the next, Elemental has always proposed for leaders and followers alike a path of informed awareness built on common ground:

The states of interaction with one another and estrangement from each other represent states of being, or levels of reality, that the artist seeks to capture and identify in order to understand their possible implications and consequences in the modern world. Social conditions and activities indicate different outcomes. Some appear to thrive in powerful socially rewarding ways—such as economic advancement or political prestige––while others seem to quietly wither away, turning into the infamous "damned souls" of the world existing in states of perpetual despair leading to the destruction of self and others.

In its essence, Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, maintains we are all on a quest to experience qualities of compassion and acceptance capable of helping to sustain both the individual and the larger society. Because such a journey tends to take place even more within than without, the visual imagery, words, and music of ILLUMINATED LOVE incorporates both levels of that reality.

Admittedly, those words might sound a bit more grandiloquent than intended. That does not mean they are any less sincere or applicable.

Powerful and Cherished Allie

​This celebration of the 10th anniversary of a book of art and poetry is not to suggest that such a volume holds the key to solving all the world's very serious problems. It is, however, to suggest that humanity for too long has remained too comfortable investing faith in fear and violence. Student walk-outs in protest against gun violence in their schools, calls for police policy and training reform, the #MeToo movement, and resistance to government policies which threaten to widen even further the gap between "haves and have-nots" prove the need and desire for something more healing and beneficial than relentlessly suffocating trauma.

We celebrate Elemental because it identifies not just a potential but a capability already within our reach. It helps take the edge off the impulse to destroy what we fear to understand and allows sufficient time to remind ourselves of this: Love, Knowledge, and Beauty are not our enemies. Whether dressed up as art, poetry, or a simple smile, they have always been among our most powerful life-sustaining allies.

May is Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love Month at Bright Skylark Literary Productions. (Title art graphic collage by Aberjhani)

"He used the word 'nourishing' to refer to Vann's work. And the more I looked through the work seriously, and took my time, that term [seemed] quite apropos. The art and poetry of Elemental nourishes the soul, the mind, and the aesthetic." ​ --Ja A. Jahannes (from remarks delivered May 29, 2008 at Celebration of Release of Elemental: The The Power of Illuminated Love)

Every now and then I get a good sense of what it might feel like to be a phoenix waking up as a pile of ash and bones which suddenly burst into new flaming life. It was kind of like that recently while continuing my ongoing recovery from the hurricanes of 2016 (Matthew) and 2017 (Irma) to prepare for the 2018 stormy-weather season.

In the course of going through yet another pile of unsorted thumb drives, DVDs, CDs, and mini cassettes, I discovered a lost treasure: a DVD filmed by the gifted polymath Benjamin Bacon (known to friends and colleagues as BeBe) labeled "Elemental, Early Morning Light Productions, by Luther E. Vann, Final Cut, Jepson Gallery, Savannah, GA, May 29, 2008." It is not something which will ever challenge the global impact of director Ryan Coogler's game-changing Black Panther film, but it has added immeasurably to the 2018 10th Anniversary Celebration of the publication of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love (ISBN 9780972114271).

​The video, shot just as YouTube and social media were developing their considerable digital muscles, captures in raw fashion a singular moment in the history of cultural arts in the United States. The program that evening included my friend Luther's debut effort as a videographer, a short bio-documentary titled Coming Home, in which he recorded me reciting the poem from which the video took its title, and chronicled his days in New York City pursuing his craft while living in the basement of a friend's apartment on Washington Square.

In addition to Luther, program participants included: Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, musician Travis Biggs, The Telfair's Friends of African-American Art (who did so much to make the evening possible), its then director Steven High, curator Harry DeLorme, and many patrons, supporters, and fans. They all combined intentions and resources to demonstrate art's ability to endow a diverse community with a single beautiful purpose. That potential is one which has eluded too many in 2018 as educational institutions and organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts have seen their budgets butchered at a time when what creatives gift to society possibly has never been more needed.​The current political assaults on freedom of the press and individual expression make it even more important to savor the kind of rarity represented by Elemental's launch ten years ago. Moreover, the event takes on greater and greater significance because some of the key geniuses who made it happen are no longer with us on the physical plane and others have taken on new missions in different cities or countries. Vann died April 6, 2016, and Jahannes on July 5, 2015. (I last communicated with violinist Travis Biggs a few months before Luther passed but since then have not received any responses to phone messages or emails).

Sensory Brilliance

Dr. Jahannes' contribution to the celebration remains particularly memorable because with his eloquent, insightful, and often humorous comments on the art and poetry of Elemental he both "stole the show" and gave it back to the audience as a perfect gift. He had been asked to introduce the Coming Home video precisely because of his familiarity with our work both as individuals and as a team. In his words:

"Aberjhani and Luther Vann have dynamic synergism in their poetry and their paintings...'Luther Vann's paintings will enrich our community for years to come,' said Steven High in a preface to Elemental. So will the poetry of Aberjhani..."

​He spoke with infectious ease when comparing Luther's work to that of painters as diverse as the Norwegian master Edvard Munch and the iconic Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. He did the same when pointing out parallels between it and musicians such as the classical composer Antonin Dvorchak and giants of jazz John Coltrane and Miles Davis. An accomplished photographer himself, Jahannes further described as Vann as "a remarkable storyteller" and "a sensory artist" whose images engage viewers' attention on multiple levels:

"He's a master of sensory brilliance. His work is visual, captivating, and viscerally engaging... If you look at these paintings, you can almost hear them. They are auditory. There are voices emitted by color and arrangement. They're kinesthetic. Energy [is] generated by the arrangement of pulsating hues... They are tactile. You can almost feel the texture by the way he layers and juxtaposes color and arranges symbols and images..."

​​These observations have since helped various scholars and art lovers to more fully understand what they are viewing when going through the pages of the book, or standing in front of Luther's work at the Telfair Museum of Art or elsewhere.

The Deep Road to Infinity

​Long before Elemental made cultural arts history in Savannah, I had become an admirer of Dr. Jahannes's poetry and essay collection, Truthfeasting. For that reason, I felt more than a little honored by his generous comments on the body of my published works and was thrilled to hear him recite the following passage:

We take the deep road to infinity.From the silence to the soundto the cross to the mosquewe bleed through the hidden tunnels of historytapping the jingle of empires and chainsto the beat of memory gone astray.

We take the deep road to infinity...​ (from the poem "More Than You Know," Elemental, p. 16)

His willingness to lend his voice in service to something greater than either of our individual ambitions was a large part of what defined Elemental's thematic substance. It brought to mind the great Lucille Clifton’s famous dictum that when it comes to identifying yourself as a poet and actually writing poetry, "One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated."

The celebratory evening of May 29, 2008, marked the culmination of an almost two-decade campaign to breathe life into a project which had survived, and in part been shaped by, the turbulence born of two creative individuals' private, social, political, and professional lives. The luxury of having finally reached a point of relief nearly overshadowed the excitement of having achieved a long-sought triumph. We soon realized we had completed only one more stage of a perpetually interactive process which would, much like the book, continue to unfold in layers of color and sparks of revelation.

“Treat others and the Planet as you would like to be treated.”––Theme for 2018 International Golden Rule Day.

My personal observance of National Poetry Month got underway with the poem Inside Compassion’s Golden-Crystal Cottage posted on the Charter for Compassion blog website. In addition to helping pave the way for celebrations of the annual event, the poem also served to accomplish the following:

Commemorate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Charter for Compassion. And:

Join the chorus of voices raised worldwide in observance of World Poetry Day.

The poem itself was inspired to a large extent by my reading of poet Coleman Barks’ volume--Rumi, The Big Red Book. His lively probing multi-faceted version of Jalal al-Din Rumi’s “Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love & Friendship” has become a favorite point of critical reference while reading Brad Gooch’s biography of the exceptional Sufi Muslim genius. (I frequently find myself debating certain points proposed by Gooch in his book, titled Rumi’s Secret, but that’s a subject for a completely different essay which, it just so happens, I am writing.)

Video in Progress

Currently, I’m working with partners from Charter for Compassion and the Golden Rule Project to produce a video based on Inside Compassion’s Golden-Crystal Cottage. Hopefully, we will be able to debut it as part of the festivities presented for International Golden Rule Day 2018. For those who read the previous sentence and asked, “What’s he talking about?” it is this:

Global citizens for a period of 24 hours, beginning 9 PM Pacific Time on April 4 and running until 9 PM on April 5, will present a live stream of music, stories, art, and conversation all inspired by the Golden Rule and streamed on Facebook Live as well as the Golden Rule Day website.

Why such a major effort for such a simple principle? The answer is easy: It is to encourage application of this universal standard and help end the pandemic of violence––regardless of justifications offered as excuses–– needlessly destroying so many lives across the globe.

A Truly International Event

​Among those expected to participate in the event are: Israeli-Australian singer and songwriter Lior, members of Japan’s Goi Peace Foundation, Indian pop singer Nimo Patel, and various contributors from New Zealand, Pakistan, England, the Middle East, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, the United States, and more.

​A lot of people are excited about this occasion because it represents such a powerful example of what it means to wage peace instead of war. It also provides an excellent demonstration of something the world could stand to see a lot more of at this time: collective compassion in unified effective action.

About the Author

Creator of Postered Chromatic Poetics and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Aberjhani may be found wearing any number of hats: historian, visual artist, poet, advocate for compassion, novelist, journalist, photographer, and editor. Having recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) he is currently writing a full-length play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

“It had been more than a year since the Joker’s conquest of America and we were all still in shock and going through the stages of grief but now we needed to come together and set love and beauty and solidarity and friendship against the monstrous forces that faced us. Humanity was the only answer to the cartoon. I had no plan except love. I hoped another plan might emerge in time but for now there was only holding each other tightly and passing strength to each other, body to body, mouth to mouth, spirit to spirit, me to you.” –Salman Rushdie (The Golden House)

Production-wise, in addition to the list of essays and poem noted in the previous post, 2017 will go down in my personal history as the year I completed the long-promised book of essays on different aspects of life in Savannah, Georgia (USA). Among the topics addressed in the book are: the increasing wrath of hurricanes, slavery of the past and present-day human-trafficking, the cultural arts, family life, the legacies of James Alan McPherson and Flannery O’Connor, John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and the enduring allure of the city of Paris, France.

Not too long ago, I responded to a tweet by fellow author J.K. Rowling in which she proposed something which prompted me to think about the scope of material covered in my book: “…If I had listened to 'the rules' back in 1990, there would be no Harry Potter. Stories about schools are passé. 95k words is too long” (https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/928688419332657153).​I thanked her with the following reply: @jk_rowling You just gave me a lot 2 think abt. I've been thinking my latest manuscript might actually be 2 #books, not 1. Btw I was a #bookseller in 1990 & HP [much later, around 1998] got me a sales bonus. #Thanks4That

Rowling’s comment––though she may have meant differently from how I first interpreted it–– made me wonder if, in my zeal to write a new kind of creative nonfiction about life in Southeast Georgia as it relates to a single individual and the larger world, I had overreached. She had noted the length specifically in regard to “Stories about schools.” But when I picked up copies of The World and Me, and The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I estimated each was no longer than 45,000 to 50,000 words. My manuscript by comparison was closer to what JK Rowling––or publishers responding to early Harry Potter manuscripts––had described as “too long.”

Then again, Ibram X. Kendi’s National book Award Winning volume, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas, is almost 600 pages long. So which was preferable: concision or heft?​This quandary, I decided, is by no means a tragedy because the new manuscript is written in such a way that it can be published as either a single large edition suitable for attracting those impressed by authorial range, or, as two separate corresponding books attractive to readers who prefer more compact volumes. The popularity of having options could ultimately add to the votes in favor of two volumes rather than one. For right now, the forced considerations provide further evidence of a year which turned out to be exceptionally productive despite endless streams of political, financial, and other kinds of unruly disruption.

Rebirth of a Visual Artist

The other important production news of the year 2017 came from the launch of the Postered Chromatic Poetics store at Fine Art America. As happy as I am that the store opened, it was one of those developments which evolved naturally out of already-established activities as opposed to stemming from a planned enterprise.​Digital art, photography, and mixed media creations have expanded my capacities for communicating literary and philosophical observations about life as we experience it on different physical, mental, and spiritual levels. They increasingly provide frames, inspiration, and useful commentary for some of my most accessed writings.

It was quite an honor when supporters of the Renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge Symposium were presented with gift cards of my Savannah River Bridge The Morning after Hurricane Matthew No 2 as commemorative keepsakes for the historic event. (All of my Postered Chromatic Poetics artwork is currently available until January 7, 2018, at 40 percent off using promo code MEKCFJ). This specific piece formerly was named The Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge The Morning after Hurricane Matthew No. 2 for the sake of historical accuracy but more and more it seemed self-defeating to keep using Talmadge’s name while simultaneously calling for its removal from the bridge.

On Eulogies and Elegies

Diverse professional priorities and obligations made it impossible for me to respond, as I often have in the past, to the loss of every beloved figure in 2017 with individual poems or essays. Actress-singer Della Reese, actor Nelsan Ellis, playwright-actor Sam Shepard, actor Robert Gillaume, and rock and roll legend Fats Domino are only a few for whom I did not get a chance to write the kind of tribute I would have preferred. Thankfully, social media made it possible to at least acknowledge most of those to whom we bid farewell during the previous year. I did a little better when it came to jazz master Al Jarreau and the great human rights advocate Dick Gregory:

Prospects and Milestones

What does all of this mean as we settle into the year 2018? Simply that a lot good ground work has been laid to increase the potential for significant accomplishments over the next 12 months. In light of difficulties so many of us are facing on personal, local, national, and international levels, that is a valuable prospect to keep in mind. We can add to those prospects a number of notable milestones towards which we may look forward:

Positive as well as negative world events are going to have their say when it comes to whatever plans and resolutions we declare for this brand New Year 2018. That’s just the way reality rolls and it is all the more reason to salvage the best of everything worthwhile gained in 2017 while preparing to step up our games with just a little bit more inspired drive and determination for 2018.

Aberjhani8 January 2018Bright Skylark Literary Productions

About Aberjhani

On any given day of the week, the creator of Postered Chromatic Poetics and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Aberjhani, may be found wearing any number of hats: historian, visual artist, poet, advocate for compassion, novelist, journalist, photographer, and editor. Having recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) he is currently writing a full-length play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

“Men and women who dedicate their lives to the realization of their gifts tend the office of that communion by which we are joined to one another, to our times, to our generation, and to the [human] race.”​––Lewis Hyde (The Gift)

I am ending the year 2017 the same way I started it: by recommitting myself to life-affirming values and productive best-practices. The hope is such commitment will help me and others continue to steer our way past the debris of political chaos and social nihilism which characterized too much of 2017 and thereby make 2018 a time of much greater unity and productivity.

In 2017 this translated into doing anything and everything necessary to complete a nonfiction book project on which I had been working for nearly a decade. It also meant increasing efforts to encourage the use of compassion as a primary tool for nonviolent conflict resolution.​Being able to say I met with significant measures of success on both fronts is a good feeling. These individual accomplishments, however, become much less satisfactory when considering how little an impact the call for compassion had on those who throughout the year 2017 convinced themselves that mass murder, as uselessly insane as it is, was a viable approach to achieving some kind of victory. Or some form of favor with divine authority.

Historic Tipping Point

While striving to reach certain goals (about which more will be said a little later) that component of history known as current events frequently interrupted my plans with its own agenda. Like authors, journalists, and artists all over the world watching the clashes between political uprisings and humanitarian urgencies, I responded in the best ways I could. ​Some, like the massacre of 305 people at the al Rawda Mosque in Egypt on November 24 and the killing of 58 people (along with the loss of millionaire gunman Stephen Craig Paddock’s life) on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada (USA) on October 1 (just to give two examples) left me speechless for days; I was astounded at our collective inability to evolve beyond an apparent addiction to the cruelest kinds of pandemonium.

In addition: extreme alt right politics (often equated with white supremacy), scary fluctuations in the climate, and the ongoing disclosure of unacceptable sexual aggressiveness within business environments have created what many consider a historic tipping point for humanity. The question is whether we’re going to tip forward toward healing progression or tumble screaming backwards into even more aggravating mayhem. A certain president’s—that would be U.S. POTUS Donald Trump’s––decision to re-tweet inflammatory anti-Muslim videos and repeatedly bate unstable dictators has not been particularly comforting.​Various transgressions stirring furious indignation are not new. Does this mean they must remain unceasing? The level of expanded public outrage prompting corrective responses to perceived, and often confirmed, injustices represents a powerful shift in humankind’s shared awareness of its potential plight. And that in itself is reason to keep hope alive and kicking.

A Bridge of Silver Wings Reconsidered

Of all the issues worth pausing my writing and art projects long enough to join fellow citizens in public protests and advocacy, the one which actually prompted me to do so was the historic Renaming the Talmadge Bridge Symposium sponsored by the social justice advocacy group Span the Gap and the Beach Institute of Savannah, Georgia. Originally, I was slated to join participating panelists on stage at the Savannah Theatre along with the moderator, former Mayor Otis S. Johnson. Health issues, however, forced me to limit my participation to taking a front-row seat in the audience and accepting Span the Gap’s gracious acknowledgment of my contributions to the ongoing campaign.​The panelist who did go on stage included: civil rights attorney, pastor, and educator Francys Johnson, president of Georgia state NAACP; community organizer Bernetta B. Lanier; Connect Savannah’s community editor Jessica Leigh Lebos; former Chatham County commissioner John McMasters; Savannah Morning News columnist Dr. Mark Murphy; community activist Pamela Oglesby; and chairman of SCAD’s Architectural History Department Robin Williams.

​My participation in discussing the need to change the name of the bridge from that of someone who openly championed white supremacy to one less racially antagonistic was less robust than I had preferred but I took some consolation in knowing I had helped create this momentous event through the publication of various essays and articles prior to it taking place. Among them:

​The Renaming the Talmadge Bridge symposium did not end with any kind of firm commitment to immediately change the name of the causeway. The event did help raise public awareness of what’s at stake if it remains unchanged. It also inspired me to begin work on a play about the dynamics of inter-generational legacies and embracing the battle to correct social injustices.

Vigorous Applications of Compassion

The practice of compassion sat either at or near the top of the list of most crucial life-affirming values to which I re-committed myself in 2017. Working with partners at Charter for Compassion, I strove to drive home the point that a vigorous application of compassion in daily personal or professional encounters, the composition of government policies, and religious considerations could go a long way toward solving many of our most egregious dilemmas. ​The following is a list of blog essays in which I attempted to present my case for advantages of applying a philosophy of universal compassion to everything from global warming and violent conflicts (domestic as well as international) to creative maladjustment, poem-making, and the agony of historic cultural shifts.

So: why all these diverse explorations of the application of the golden rule? Because there’s a lot more wisdom in doing unto others as we would have them do unto us than most people take time to consider.

About Aberjhani

On any given day of the week, the creator of Postered Chromatic Poetics and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Aberjhani, may be found wearing any number of hats: historian, visual artist, poet, advocate for compassion, novelist, journalist, photographer, and editor. Having recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) he is currently writing a full-length play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.